When to have a baby has never been a hotter topic. While women debate at what point you should take a foot off the career ladder, settle down with ‘Mr Right’, or indeed, try motherhood alone, last month one of Britain’s top NHS fertility specialists warned women to start trying for a baby before 30 – or risk not having one at all.

But how does it feel to have that choice taken out of your hands? Here, Maxine Evans, 48, an actress who ironically stars in Call The Midwife, describes what it’s like to be told at 21 that you’ll never be able to have children.

Maxine, who lives in Forest Gate, East London, with her husband Neil, 45, reveals how that bombshell had both a positive and negative impact on her life.

Maxine in Call the Midwife

The debate rages on around me constantly. Endless headlines – "women must have children before the age of 30" "women struggle to conceive at 37", or the counter argument, ‘older mums make better mothers’.

Most recently it was suggested schoolchildren should be taught the limits of fertility.

In the middle of this storm I don’t know whether to feel grateful or frustrated. Because I’m that rare phenomena – the woman who knew from a very young age, in my case 21, (although I suspected much younger) I would never be able to have children.

Biologically, it was simply never an option.

Part of me is relieved I’ve never faced that pressure so many of my friends have – to have children before they are ready, stepping off the pedal of a career in fear of leaving it ‘too late’.

The pressure to find the right man in time to make dreams of motherhood come true. Or the misery of infertility treatment which can tear couples apart when it repeatedly fails.

Part of me, of course, is frustrated – women capable of having what I never could are delaying motherhood. But of course, I understand why. If they don’t feel ready, they don’t feel ready. If they haven’t found the right man, if they’ve worked hard at a career which is only just taking off...

Maxine as Rhian in Stella

My own career – I’ve appeared in BBC One drama Call the Midwife (of all shows!) and Stella (as a grandmother of seven) – may not have gone so far if I had children. Standing aside from all of this, watching women wrestle with the warnings, I can only comprehend what it is like not to have the choice which is causing such a fracas.

I admit it’s been a painfully hard situation for me to accept. In some ways I now realise I have been bereaved since I found out. I have been grieving for the loss of something I never had.

As a little girl I always wanted to be a mother. My own mum was 45 when she had me. She had, years earlier, had a daughter, my older sister, but she died of cancer at just 17. I never knew her. My mum feared it was too late to have another, then I came along.

I grew up as an only child in Seven Sisters, South Wales. I would play with my Tiny Tots doll and even fantasised about having children when I was in my early teens.

My mum made a big thing about my periods starting. Every time I had tummy ache she’d send me out with a sanitary towel. But my monthly cycle never kicked in.

At 15 she took me to the doctors but I was reassured some girls start late. At 18 I was given hormones to get me started. Nothing. But I believed it would happen. Me and early boyfriends used protection.

It wasn’t until I was 21 I had a full examination. I was told my womb had not developed to full size and I had no eggs. Very matter-of-factly my doctor said I would never have children. Then he said he’d put me on the pill so I would have monthly bleeds and ‘feel like a woman’. I turned to the wall and cried.

When I got home my mum and dad immediately mourned the loss of grandchildren. I didn’t know how I was supposed to feel.

My boyfriend of the time didn’t say anything but I sensed things changed. There was a distance. Things weren’t the same again and we split up.

Maxine as a teenager

I did feel a sense of failure. I wasn’t able to do what I should. It is a disability in a sense – I didn’t feel perfect. But I couldn’t talk about it. At 21 it felt silly to be upset, it’s not like I was thinking of children then. Then I went to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and threw myself into that. But at times I struggled.

I had two teachers who became pregnant. One wore a leotard for dance classes and her bump was clear. Everyone wanted to touch it. Sometimes I’d skip class because I couldn’t bear to see it.

For me, it has always been pregnancy and labour which I have found most difficult to confront. I am godmother to five children, I used to babysit for my best friend and neighbour. I find looking after kids comforting.

OK, buying bootie sets after bootie sets for friends’ babies has never filled me with joy, but it’s the fact I can’t experience the act of carrying a child and giving birth that most upsets me.

Before I joined the cast of Call the Midwife I used to sob through it as a viewer and had to stop watching it. Luckily, on set, my character Mrs Busby isn’t involved in the baby scenes. But I’m the same with One Born Every Minute – I can’t watch.

Soon after starting drama school I got together with my husband, Neil, who had been a friend in my teens.

My mum had told me to be sure I got a ring on my finger before I told any man about my infertility. But a few dates in I told him everything.

We went to the cinema to see Frankie and Johnny. The scene where Michelle Pfeiffer finds out she can’t have children left me in floods of tears. In the car on the way home I cried again. Neil asked what was wrong and I sobbed the truth. He said ‘Thank God, I thought something was really wrong’.

He said he wanted to be with me whatever. It was a huge relief.

Maxine with husband Neil Docking

My life with Neil is amazing. Without children, I think we may be closer. Children take your time away from your partner. People comment we still act like we’re dating. And without children we haven’t had to grow up, we haven’t carried that responsibility.

We live a very full life. But I can’t lie and say we travel the world. We are actually very homely people, we love being with our two dogs.

One of the hardest things is the reactions of other people.

Those who have kids have their own club, and look at you with pity when they know you can’t have them. I hate that pity look. When I go to visit a new baby and hold it I feel watched – to see how I cope.

People will ask why we don’t have children. When we say we can’t they react like someone has died. They will say how sorry they are. Then quick as a flash they will follow up with ‘Look at the holidays you can have’. Or they will say ‘Everything happens for a reason’ or ‘It was not meant to be’.

I would rather someone asked me straight how I find life without children. Because there are worse things.

I have grieved for the baby I couldn’t have – especially when I was younger and was at the age I could have had one. Approaching 50 it gets easier.

But my sister died before her 18th birthday – that’s a great leveller. And I have a beautiful life, wonderful friends, a job I always wanted and a brilliant husband.

We haven’t adopted, that didn’t feel right for us – it was always carrying and giving birth to a child I craved most.

Not having had that is a part of my life I am sad about. And I’m sure I will be sad when friends become grandparents. But I can put it to one side for now.

All I would say to young women is get your fertility checked out. Don’t succumb to the pressure to rush into pregnancy before you are ready, but be aware fertility isn’t a given.

I’d have given anything to have a choice over motherhood. When I look at how happy Neil and I are, I wonder if we would even have chosen to have children. But that choice was taken from me, and that’s what I’ve mourned.

* Maxine has directed a play about infertility, Barren, one of two one-act plays Sensitive Subjects currently showing at the Tristan Bates Theatre, London, until Saturday.